Dem moderates, liberals lash out over Dodd-Frank

Moderate House Democrats are warring with the dominant liberal faction over the leftward shift of the caucus, arguing that they’ll never win back the majority if they don’t change their message.

Tension reached a boiling point during a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday over the party’s stance toward Wall Street banks, according to multiple sources at the meeting.

Story Continued Below

Liberal Massachusetts Rep. Mike Capuano incensed the moderates when he said if Democrats support rolling back Dodd-Frank regulations, “you might as well be a Republican.”

Capuano’s comments were so pointed he immediately offended the handful of Democrats who had voted with Republicans previously on the issue and still support it, the sources said. Capuano said in an interview that he stood by his remarks and he had not heard that any of his colleagues were upset. The bill was defeated by Democrats Wednesday.

The moderate Democrats pushed back in the caucus meeting in exchanges described as “intense and emotional.”

They were angered because that same legislation had garnered support from more than 70 Democrats in the 113th Congress, but became a political landmine after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the legislation as a Wall Street handout.

The vocal infighting highlights the growing divide between the large bloc of “Warren liberals” and the dwindling number of moderate Democrats — a fight that will likely continue next week when Republicans make their second attempt to change the controversial Dodd-Frank law.

“I feel strongly that the Democratic body is supposed to be representing the average American who is unaware and incapable of defending themselves when it comes to things like Wall Street abusing them,” Capuano said in an interview. “I feel strongly about it and I said so.”

Tensions continued to run high after the caucus meeting. Hoyer caught incoming fire when he attended a meeting of the New Democrat Coalition, a pro-business faction of the caucus, later in the day.

At the New Democrat meeting, Hoyer was on the receiving end of impassioned concerns by his moderate colleagues. Reps. Gerry Connolly (Va.), John Carney (Del.) and Jim Himes (Conn.) all voiced strong opinions, according to sources in the room.

The 40-member group expressed anger at the liberal faction for name calling and for dismissing their point of view outright. The lawmakers told Hoyer that any future Democratic majority would look more like them than the liberal faction of the caucus.

A Democratic aide, who was in the meeting, said the members also brought up concerns about the government spending bill that passed in December and the lack of pro-business messaging in the mid-term elections.

Hoyer was not the target of the frustration, but lawmakers said they were tired of feeling like their integrity was in question and that the caucus no longer respects members who aren’t progressive, according to multiple sources who attended the meeting. The Maryland Democrat responded to the members’ concerns. He told them he understood their frustration, but that they also need to attend caucus meetings and raise their issues there.

“A lot of moderates don’t feel like they can speak up in Caucus without getting shouted down by the far left,” the Democratic aide said. “[Hoyer] understood what they had to say – obviously, he’s always been a natural ally for the party’s moderates, so he wants them to have a voice in the caucus as a whole. But he added that it’s important for the moderates to assert themselves whenever possible, which they agreed they’d do more frequently going forward.”

Hoyer followed up at Thursday’s whip meeting that there shouldn’t be name calling and that House Democrats agree on 90 percent of the issues and shouldn’t divide themselves on the 10 percent where they have different opinions.

“The diversity of the House Democratic Caucus is one of our greatest strengths,” Hoyer said in a statement. “Unlike the deep divisions we’ve seen in the Republican conference, Democrats welcome a range of viewpoints and have remained unified on the vast majority of issues that have come before the House.”